Journalist and historian Joseph Gibbs is an associate professor of mass communication at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). He is the author of Gorbachev’s Glasnost (1999), the Civil War regimental history Three Years in the Bloody Eleventh (2002), and Dead Men Tell No Tales (2007), about pirate James Jeffers, alias Charles Gibbs. He holds a doctorate from Boston University.

In
addition to being commercialized and romanticized, piracy’s history
has also been distorted, with many works straying far from the facts
recorded in the Age of Sail. In this book, author Joseph Gibbs goes
back to many of the original materials about those who “went
on the account” (a classic euphemism for piracy) to deliver
an engaging, closely interpreted anthology of seven decades of primary
sources. The text comprises original monographs, broadsides, trial
records, newspaper articles, and official reports that deal with
piracy in and involving the Americas in the late 18th and early
19th centuries. Joseph Gibbs annotates and explains these records
in order to clarify the era’s historical, legal, literary, and nautical
references.

Along the way readers will experience violent mutinies,
vicious sea battles, anti-piracy raids on Louisiana islands and
Latin American coasts, and the United States’ first sustained
encounter with the Barbary Corsairs. They will also catch glimpses
of maritime brigands as remarkable as any that walked the decks
of piracy’s earlier “golden age” and encounter the naval
officers and sailors who strove to bring them to rough justice.
Enhanced with period maps and illustrations, On the Account
provides an enlightening introduction to piracy’s original
canon as it emerged in the era of the quill pen and hand-operated
press.

Paperback ISBN:

978-1-84519-476-5

Paperback Price:

£29.95 / $49.95

Release Date:

April 2012

Page Extent / Format:

256 pp. / 246 x 171 mm

Illustrated:

Extensively illustrated

Introduction

1. “Veterans in blood and murder” – The mutiny
aboard the Polly and the trial of Joseph Andrews (1766, 1769)

2.
“All Tory by God” – Mutiny aboard the St. Louis (1778)

3.
“A heart hard enough to kill a man” – The Eliza mutiny and
the trial of “three foreigners” (1799-1800)

4.
“The most abject slavery” – The United States and
the Barbary Pirates (1793–1804)

8.
“Her red flag [was] nailed to the mast” – The campaign against
piracy in the Gulf and Caribbean (1822–1825)

9.
“No evidence of a ‘contrite heart’” – The Vineyard mutiny
and the piracy confessions of “Charles Gibbs” (1830–1831)

10.
“Demons in the shape of men” – The taking of the Mexican and
its aftermath (1832–1835) Notes
Bibliography
Index

In On the Account,
Professor Joseph Gibbs has put together a fascinating collection
of documents pertaining to piracy that allows the reader to
cut through the many artificial and romantic images that have
been associated with these crimes of the sea. His selection
of materials from the late 18th and early 19th century, including
pirate confessions, newspaper accounts, letters, contemporary
published works, and other sources, together with his insightful
commentary, explanatory footnotes, and 30 well-chosen illustrations,
make this work a must-have for individuals and libraries interested
in maritime history. The sources and analysis presented in this
engaging work are part of a larger effort by modern historians
to understand the culture of piracy, and its sources in mutiny
and privateering.
Rodney Carlisle, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers
University

Joseph Gibbs has selected,
annotated, and introduced an excellent set of primary sources
on piracy in a period (1766–1835)
that has long deserved closer study. Exemplifying the recent
trend to treat piracy as a serious scholarly subject, On
the Account will be of interest to researchers and teachers,
and, at the same time, to general readers and enthusiasts
in our pirate-crazed world.
Marcus Rediker, author of Villains
of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

From Blackbeard to Long John
Silver and from Jean Lafitte to Errol Flynn and the pirates
of Somalia,
popular interest in the men and a few women who went “on
the account” (the classic euphemism for becoming pirates)
has never seemed to slacken. Stories and supposedly factual
accounts and histories – true, false, and literary – have
appeared in every media format for hundreds of years. Of
late, a new spate of scholarly works has examined waterborne
piracy from social, economic, political, and biographical
perspectives. To these may be added On the Account by Gibbs
(American Univ. of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates), which
is not a narrative per se, but instead a selection of ten
carefully chosen, introduced, and annotated primary sources
from the 18th and 19th centuries. The indexed text is taken
from original monographs of the period, broadsides, newspaper
articles, trial records, and official reports; it is supplemented
with maps and 30 illustrations, plus a five-page bibliography.
… This new volume is a helpful introduction for students and experts alike, and suitable for all collections.
Recommended.
M. J. Smith Jr., Tusculum College, Choice

In sum, On
the Account is a worthy addition
to the proliferating literature on the maritime Americas
in the Age of Revolution. No comparable volume of carefully
authenticated and resourced documents on the topic exists,
and each chapter serves as a rich cache of primary material
ready to serve as the bedrock of a course’s exploration of
that topic or incident … [The] very valuable act of bringing
together these rich, varied resources for an important and
understudied era of maritime violence is a valuable contribution
to our expanding knowledge of piracy in and around the Americas
after the end of the ‘golden age’.
M.T. Rafferty, International Journal of Maritime History,
2012 (24), 324–325

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